Road accidents in a hilly State like Jammu and Kashmir are frequent. Traffic Department takes this as a desk book formula. Therefore, it does not attach any importance to controlling the accidents and saving innocent and precious lives. With a negative sense of irresponsibility and no-concern, people tend to become inhuman and thick-skinned. The other name of this phenomenon is degradation of humanism. The worst is when this type of degradation engulfs the entire administrative structure, which fails to function but remains glued to earning the wages and allowing life to go by sheer momentum of routine. What is a bureaucracy worth if it has no initiative, no originality, no innovation and no urge to subscribe to the improvement of quality of life. Perhaps we must also bring into focus the quality of bureaucracy, which, unfortunately, has sunk to its nadir. It is a white elephant consuming tons of grass with no output. May be a time comes when society will need drastic change in inducting really meritorious personnel into administration not through the instrumentality of outdated and redundant process of Public Service Commission and Recruitment Boards. These institutions are not only old fashioned and useless but also are not without blemish of incompetence and corruption. It is no more than a myth to think and accept that bureaucrats selected through these selection agencies are really the cream of society; they are not. Most of them are career makers and self-servers basking in the largesse which society has unwittingly agreed to provide them.
This class of bureaucracy is not only callous but is also one that detests common good. It is impervious to its moral and spiritual responsibility. It has become politicized and is adopting the path of least resistance. Since it cannot think for itself, it has become an enigma unto itself.
More than a thousand people get killed and more than 6000 wounded in road accidents in our State each year. This is no small a number of losses of human life. If any research institute were to conduct a study of economic condition of the families whose members get killed in road accidents, it would make a shocking account. Unfortunately, no such study has been conducted so far. When a road accident happens, the concerned traffic officer of the area sends a report to higher ups, which just go through it, give a wink and note down the words “file”. With that the report is filed and nothing happens. This is the machinery we boastfully call State Administration.
We had a short span of Governor’s rule in the State. As he began functioning as chief administrative boss, he paid attention to the serious issue of recurring road accidents in the hilly State. He decided to use his powers and position for setting things right. Why road accidents should happen so frequently and why should precious lives be allowed to get destroyed, he thought. With this question lurking in his mind, he took the administrative decision, called a meeting of seniors in Police and Traffic Department, Secretary Transport Department and many other bureaucrats on 14 February last. In this meeting, the issue was thoroughly discussed and at the end of the day, some solid suggestions emerged which the Governor desired the administration to implement within a time frame. These pertained to almost all aspects like condition of the road, verification of documents, condition of the vehicles, deployment of traffic police according to schedule, increase in the manpower of Traffic Department, providing emergency medical aid and mobile trauma units and several other matters that would go a good way in reducing frequency of road accidents. The time schedule was also fixed and the bureaucratic staff present in the meeting agreed to adhere to the schedule.
Elected Government replaced Governor’s rule. The bureaucrats who had committed themselves to the implementation of Governor’s directives, consigned the directive file to dust bin, and are now again basking in the largesse of political favoritism. Lack of accountability is at the root of this kind of work culture in the State administration. The bureaucrats know that with the populist Government at the helm of affairs, nobody is going to hold them accountable to anything wrong happening in the administration under their charge. This type of deliberate dereliction of duty is not going to be remedied as long as the stern hand of accountability does not come in to play its part. It is the negative impact of populist regimes and nobody other than the political leadership of the country is to be held responsible for molth-eaten work culture in the administration of the State.
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